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Monday, May 30, 2011

The Best Places to Live Cheaply

It seems the prices of food and gas are rising daily and yet most peoples earnings have been at a stand still for years now. That leaves a lot of people looking for the best places to live cheaply. That is places where the dollar will stretch and last as long as possible. In this blog we continually review places to live all of the world. We spend a lot of time looking for the cheapest places to live and we also occasionally put money a side and consider things that add up to give the Best Places for Quality of Life.

In your personal quest to discover the best place for you to live cheaply we thought these resources may come in handy. Check them out and please leave us a comment if you find these helpful in finding the perfect place for you and your family.

The International Salary Calculator

One of the first places you may want to consider having a look as you scour the globe to find the most affordable place to live is to determine exactly how far your salary will take you in the a new city or country. Sure, moving means your salary will likely change but it's good to know ahead of time how much you need to earn to cover your living expenses in your chosen new location. The best place we've found to get started is:

Salary.com. This a terrific financial site that will give you a lot of details. This is U.S. based information so you can discover the salary range for your chosen career for specific areas in the United States The site also gives you additional information like education requirements and usual benefits, and it'll even estimate your pay check.

International Salary Calculator: For U.S. Citizens considering International Jobs PayScale.com is a great tool for broadening your search to other countries. Their dbase s still more based on US data than anywhere else but they are expanding and collecting data form other countries. SalaryExpert.com is another tool for finding out what your profession makes in another country. It has a large selection of city information for most parts of the developed world.

Cost of Moving Calculator

Sperling.com has one of the best cost of living calculators online. It takes into account where you live now and allows you to compare to where you want to live. You can alos compare your current salary and how much you will need to earn in your new location to maintain your current lifestyle. CNN Money also has a similar calculator tool but it doesn't offer nearly the depth of detail that Sperling does. Another problem is that CNN tends to be US-Centric so their tools and information are generally limited to the United States.

Where are the Most Affordable Places to Live?

Every now and then Business Week will have some good articles on the most affordable housing in the US. One such article noted Minot, Fort Worth and Tulsa, Ok all making the list. However, that information is a bit dated as it was originally published in 2006. Still, BW is a great resource for current information on the best places to live and its a good place to start your research. For the past few years the economic downturn has impacted the housing market the most and it continues to have an affect on most of the country. This has certainly made real estate more affordable for those who still have a job and can afford to buy.

Another study titled 'Eight Cheapest Places to Live' is also from BusinessWeek and it gives a good list of the cheapest places to live in America including info and stats on crime and other factors to consider before moving. Making this list are: Austin,Tx; Boise, Id; Minneapolis, Mn and Olympia, WA.

Kiplinger.com is another site for great articles on how far your real estate purchasing dollar will go. It focused on home prices between $300,000 to $1 million. Kiplinger ranked Fort Smith one of the cheapest and also gives us a way to see which areas of the country are offering the best values in Real Estate. And lets face it who doesn't enjoy the fantasy of seeing just how far a million bucks will go!

TODAY.msnbc at msn.com offers up a great little video on the 'Cheapest Places to Rent'. They examine the top cities for living cheap by renting. The cheapest place to live on rent - Wichita, Kansas at just $470 per month for a 600 sq ft place. In Dayton, Ohio a 500 sq ft home sets you back $570 per month. The video and article also has some interesting details about each city, including some fun facts that might make a move to these smaller cities worth your while. And if you've been searching for a high-end lifestyle at a cheap price they also discuss the top five fancy places to live that have dropped substantially in price. Where lifestyle is your most important criteria and cost secondary you can also explore the Healthiest and Wealthiest countries to live in.

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About Me

I'm on a Mission! to find the Cheapest Places to Live with a nice quality of life. I found Panama to be one such place - you can learn more in my Free 'Letters from Panama' at LearnAboutPanama.com. Please join in the discussion here on the blog by leaving your comments and your own stories about places where people are happy living frugally!